Certainly, that is the theory, but capitalism does not always optimize for worker salaries. You can find examples of what you describe happening, but you can a

Certainly, that is the theory, but capitalism does not always optimize for worker salaries. You can find examples of what you describe happening, but you can also find examples of the opposite: For the last few decades, the perception is that the economy is not expanding at a rate required to "float all boats." as it were. In fact, I think your example is a very good one: >This "lump of labor fallacy[1]" was used when women joined the workforce. The worry was that with only so much work to go around, the additional workers would cause mass unemployment. But we didn't get unemployment, we got a larger economy with a higher standard of living. I think that most men who are not in our industry would disagree. If you look at the inflation-adjusted income for a man from the '70s and now... and it hasn't grown a whole hell of a lot. One can make a strong argument (supported by the meteoric rise in woman's salaries during the same period) that this is largely the effect of effectively doubling the number of workers available for most jobs over the same period. I mean, obviously, from a justice point of view, this is righting a very old wrong. It's great that women are on a more equal footing; it's fair. I'm not saying that this is bad overall... I'm just giving an example, that can be tracked with publicly available statistics, of how the average wages of a group that is employed can be pushed down by adding more laborers to that group.